It All Starts From The Soul - Jorsh Peña

The Descendants

Clooney. Revered actor. Former ER doctor. Sexiest Man Alive. And after this March, it’s very well possible that he will be able to add Oscar Winner to that list.

But this isn’t a tale about the perfect specimen, because in Alexander Payne’s film, The Descendants, Clooney plays Matt King, a workaholic attorney, indifferent husband and apathetic father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and re-evaluate his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki.

Just as Matt steps up to reconcile with his daughters and abandon the role of absent husband and father, life blindsides him, first when he’s informed that his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) will never come out of her coma, and second, when his daughter tells him that Mom was cheating on him. Chew on that for a moment. I’ll wait….

Before you write this off as ‘why would I want to see a film about calamity when I have real life?’, know that director Alexander Payne, the creator or Oscar-winning film, Sideways, and master of the human comedy, is adept at delivering the funny, messy details and imperfections of life. Sometimes humorous. Sometimes tragic. Always captivating. Even more so, you will see Clooney give his finest, most real and emotionally raw performance of his career, downplaying his effortless and notorious charm that we’re used to.

With the help of brilliant cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, you will experience a local’s version of Hawaii; not the picture-perfect, postcard sort—a version of Hawaii that parallels the candor and distress of this family’s turn of events. Watch as Matt debates how to handle his current position—Pull the life-support plug on Elizabeth? Resort into denial? Confront her lover? Payne takes seemingly predictable events and develops them into an entertaining and truthful measure of what defines a family. The Descendants provokes thought, questioning and consideration about the reality.